Eva Beylin on eGirl Capital, The Graph, and Building Web3

it's not just a it's not just a cliche. Right now, Yeah, people are talking about crypto winter, so I guess a redux of what we saw back in where we had the big fall and then it took a very very long time for people to get excited and interested in crypto again. But that said, I do feel like this period of time is it feels a little bit different because even though the spot prices of a bunch of different things are falling, it seems like there's still a

ton of money flooding into the space. And maybe that'll change eventually, but for the time being, it feels like there's still a lot of interest. Yeah, I think that's true. It also feels like there's you know, twenty eighteen en it felt like it was the only thing that people really talked about with crypto was the price. And I still think like the price of the coins is still

like the part that captures people's attention the most. But I guess there is this idea of like, okay, like there's some new Web three point oh Web three that's getting built out, and it's being built towards something, And I don't think anyone is that great at describing what it's going to look like or what this new version

of the Internet is. But I guess that that it's I think it's sufficiently captured people's imagination enough that even if the price were to stay depressed, people want to keep building it out and turning it into something a little bit more tangible beyond speculation. Well, this is one of the remarkable things about crypto. I feel like it's almost like every time you turn around, there's a new

use case that gets invented, And you're right. It is weird to think that a few years ago, we weren't talking about Web three point oh, we weren't talking about defy at all. We were just talking about bitcoin mostly as a unit of payment, maybe an inflation hedge, digital goal, that sort of thing. And already in the space of a few years, the narrative changes so quickly the narrative

change is super fast. I sometimes go back and forth whether that's a good sign or whether it's just like, oh, here's our new thing because the last thing didn't materialize. But nonetheless it's ongoing. You know you mentioned in the beginning, and I think this is really key is that, yes, there is this decline in prices that we've seen, but on the flip side, it feels like there's an intense amount of investment and building and money pouring into like

creating new things. And so I really want to explore this tension more by talking about like what's really going on between the price and then you know there's sort of like actual activity in this space, because they really are two different things. Yeah, absolutely, let's do it. Okay, I am very excited. Oh wait, wait, there's one more thing I want to say. You know what, one thing that's really weird about talking about crypto is you're gonna have to narrow it down one weird thing about talking

about crypto. There are many weird things. There's one more thing, which is that so many of the best people in the space are pseudonymous, like I don't know who they are. There's like all like these like incredible like experts that I've learned a ton from over the years, and I

literally have no idea who they are. And unlike tread fi like pseudonymous teams, pseudonymous founders, pseudonymous investors, people are just an avatar, you know, maybe a frog, maybe an anime character, maybe something like that could be like these really important voices to listen to the space. Yeah, it's always interesting when you're you're getting really good crypto information from like like digital picture of an ape, a drawing

of a monkey. Yeah, exactly right. All right, well today we are going to be speaking to a frog, but we're going to be speaking to a maybe a colleague of them. I am very excited. We're going to bring speaking to Eva Balen. She is the director at the Graph Foundation, and she is an e girl at the Girl Capital, an amorphous crypto investment collective whose members include various handles that people might see at crypto Twitter, like at loom dart and at Digen Spartan and at Crypto

cat VC. I'm just looking at their website and Eva, who is not pseudonymous. So Eva, thank you very much for coming out odd lot, Thank you so much for having me excited to chat. So wait, First of all, I used to be in some discord that was like the egirl Capital discord, and now I'm not in it anymore. Did I get kicked out or did it disappear like what happened? Oh no, I'm not sure. Maybe we should talk to our resident discord owner of the cat in

the Hasmath suit. But we did have a public chat that was just sort of for our unity to come around share information. Alright, well, somehow I'm not in it. The cat is at c L two oh seven. But more seriously, like what is the girl Capital? Yeah, so first we started off as just you know, a few and nons, and we quickly realized that the scope that we were covering in our interests, um you know, we

could do some damage. We could either start to invest or um you know, start to get more involved in the way we were already involved in Web three, which you know, as you mentioned, I'm director of the foundation at the Graph. We've got a few members who are leaders of projects, so Scoopy Trooples, a CEO of Alcomics. We've got another guy named DevOps who leads Saddle Finance.

We've got a few traders, a few security engineers. So we realized that with this breadth of experience, we actually have something very unique to offer that wasn't consistent with typical investment funds in UM Web two or in Wall Street UM, and not even consistent with Web three, where we don't have any LPs UM and we operate quite independently. So UM even every deal, you know, not every member participates in, and we actually um you know, only agree to you know, take on an egirl d if we're

all kind of in consensus. So I mean, I have a bunch of questions already, but maybe just to begin with, could you could you maybe describe your your membership a little bit more? And I guess who are the types of people that would join something like egirl Capital versus going down the route of traditional crypto investment, and what is it that they get out of this particular organization

versus again, more traditional forms of investment. And I guess my overarching question is also how do you actually decide what to invest in and coordinate given that you're dealing with a group of disparate people, some of whom, as Joe pointed out in the intro, are pseud aotonomous yes and answer your first question. You know, the way we came together was again very kind of organic, and a lot of us have full time jobs that are different. So you know, I have a full time job as

a builder, um. Others you know might be trading or running other investments full time. And so for us it was like, how can we come together in this way that is organic. We don't have some quota or some expectations from LPs, but still provide value. And so for us that it's much more of a choice. We aren't sort of behold into any expectations and even our investments you know, aren't again meeting some kind of quota per year.

So um, we've been around for about a year now and we've made two million dollars about two million dollars worth of investments across ten different projects UM. And really our priority is to invest in critical decentralized primitives of web three UM and kind of you know, the metaverse meets defy. So a lot of our projects, um, you know are actually an f T based something like yat um or you know, investing in actually art or unisocks,

as you you know might have seen. We startingly believe in um veblin goods and the ability that you know, for goods representing early defy um like unisocks you know, are likely to increase in value long term. UM. But we're also investing in a lot of really critical protocols

that are going to fundamentally change technology and innovation. So UM, things like connects, which is a layer two protocol that connects literally connects between different layer twos on ethereum UM, or Radical, which is sort of a GitHub replacement a way to have open source code collaboration. UM. So really we are motivated by what are the best projects, what would make the most impact, and what's most aligned with

Web three. I just want to ask about the coordination portion of it, Like how do you actually go about identifying and evaluating potential investments. Yeah, so all of us are in different sub communities, so typically, you know, there might be one or two members of the girl that are kind of leading that deal. Maybe it was, um, you know, a project they've already been working with or got connected with, and then we'll start doing our own

internal due diligence. UM. I'm excited to say we now have a few interns we didn't have that here ago UM, but they often will help us do research, whether that's looking at on chain metrics, maybe comparing against other projects UM. And again, because we're so deep in the space, a lot of us have expertise, whether it's you know, security or smart contracts or business that we can kind of

bring to to each deal. UM. But I wouldn't say it's you know, quite the most traditional due diligence process as hedge funds that you're used to seeing. Is there a pooled capital element of it? Like is there a pot that you and these fellow your fellow members and put money into. And I'm just curious, like are they

anonymous to you as well? Most of them? So first question, we don't have a potum, although we have been considering growing into a doubt formally on chain um where right now, the way we behave is per deal, so you know, we kind of bring it to the group. Anyone who wants to participate, you know, gets a cut or you know, depending on kind of the breakdown or interest, and we typically will um, you know, bring it on as an

ego deal if there's enough interest from the group. If there isn't enough interest, you know, again, we have our own statures in the community, so often someone will do an angel investment or maybe even go work with the project directly. Um. What was your second question again? To what degree? Like, do you mostly know your colleagues as a nons or have you like are there some there that you still don't know who they are? Oh? No, they're fully ant me. Um. I've met a few of

them in person. UM. I know you know a few of their first names, but otherwise you know, I I don't know very much about them. And that's kind of the beauty of it. You know. Part of the Web three and cryptovision is how do we actually utilize pseudonymity in a more productive way. So you know, DJs have been doing this for years. You know, almost every DJ has their own alias or alter ego and they get

to then create that sub community or sub brand. And so similarly with crypto, you know, you can participate in a protocol in a sort of gig economy style. And why do you need that to be tied to your birth identity? Um? When actually you can start to create your own alter ego on chain that might be associated with you know, a cat or a monkey. Um. And maybe you're only you know, participating in this one protocol, and then maybe you have another identity for a different one.

I'm thinking about David Solomon and DJ soul Um. So sorry, he might be an E girl, he might be yeah, who knows. Well, okay, So again this is one of those conversations is just throwing up more and more question. But two things. One y E girl, and I guess it's a really stupid question. Are most of your members female or was there a desire there to get more females on board with crypto? And then secondly, what's the

benefit of pseudonymity? Because when I think of crypto and bitcoin, I always think, well, this is sort of attention at the heart of crypto. On the one hand, it's transparent and traceable and you can see all the transactions on a blockchain and things like that. But on the other hand, it's not necessarily tied to a single identity, and so you are able to do anonymous transactions. So I guess what I'm getting at is what's the benefit of preserving

that pseudonymity of investors. The meme of E girl, I believe came out of more anime and hent culture um as I'm sure you've seen, you know, things like v tubing where people are literally creating cartoon images of their faces and then going on YouTube and you know, doing a show has become extremely popular or even streaming, and so we kind of tapped into this idea of you know, anime and m cartoon characters you know, should also be

taken seriously as much as suits. Um in a sense, we kind of present this anti suit culture or anti suit meme. And I really personally related to that because I used to be a management consultant in New York and you know, being forced into sort of this box. And it was very clear to me that webs three and Crypto are the antithesis of that, where you really can still be taken seriously for your bottom line or for you know, the insightful tweets or whatever you might

be investing in. You don't need to be wearing a suit. You could be wearing a hazmat suit, I guess on your second question. So, the biggest misconception to me that I see is people think that suitonymity or anonymity means that you don't have reputation, when actually it's quite the opposite that if you want to be known, and if you want to have a community or you know, have a job, you have to make much more effort to develop that reputation than otherwise, you know, k y C people.

So you know, I'm one of the only DOCS members and you know, technically speaking, I've been developing my reputation since I was born, and you know that's google able. But anyone who chooses to take on a different personality

is starting from scratch um. And so there's this misconception that you know, of course, maybe you can't always trust and nons, maybe there's some degree of risk, But at the same time they've taken on a significant amount of risk too that if they wanted to rebuild that identity or reputation, they would take much longer than for everyone else. So I'm curious, you know, I'm looking at your your portfolio on your website. I'm very amused by the unisocks investment.

For one thing, that was for those who don't remember, we had Mike de m Ray on the podcast in December and he was involved in that, which is basically buy an n f T that's associated with a literal

pair of talks. But some of these projects like I think there's like all the like well known I guess you would call them docks actually or just sort of like established VC firms in them, and then the announcement will like you know, to be like some name that you've heard of from Silica Valley, egol Capital as part of the round do legacy vcs? What do they think about being part of a deal where you guys are listed on the round? You know, I don't. I don't know,

and to be honest, I don't really care. Um. I think part of what we're trying to bring here is like we're a group of highly capable, you know, folks that have been in the space for between you know, three to ten years. Um, you know, some started early on in bitcoin, and we're bringing a lot of value to the table that maybe untraditional, but um, you know we're still here. We still were able to get a seat, you know, the project believed in our value that we

could bring to them. Um. So I think it's really exciting and it's you know, breaking down that barrier that you know, you don't have to be wearing suits, you don't even have to have an identity that's public really to do well. Can we talk a little bit about out the graph, which is your day job, and I would love to get your summary of what exactly it does. But the other thing I want to ask you is

it has to do with atherium. It's not like a bitcoin based application or protocol, and I guess I'm wondering. You know, excitement over a theory um seems to be one thing that a lot of the vcs share. So the institutional capital is much more excited over ethereum and applications and defy type stuff that you can build on that versus basic bitcoin, which is seen as not being

as well suited to those types of applications. So I guess my question is why ethereum and not something else and doesn't mean that you sort of share something in common with vcs and institutional money. So the graph is a decentralized protocol for organizing and retrieving on chain data.

And what that means is every application that you see that is running on a blockchain or queries smart contract, they have to retrieve that data from a blockchain somehow, and it's actually really difficult for developers to do that. They would have to run their own node, they would have to become experts in that blockchain. It's essentially a

back end job. And so what the graph does is we have a standardized layer or a standardized API called a subgraph that allows developers to develop you know, an organization style or figure out exactly what information they want from the blockchain and just you know, play around with that subgraph. Meanwhile, the actual indexing and processing of that data goes on in the back end on a network

of index ers. So we're really decentralizing the server or the back end of what otherwise would be you know, uh, database UM, you know, indexing infrastructure UM that is serving data to users. So we often like to call ourselves the Google of blockchains, so as Google is a search engine and also the back end indexing of all of

the Internet's data. Currently, the graph protocol is the indexing bit, and so we're trying to enable other applications like search engines and just in general to be able to retrieve that data as efficiently as possible. And why ethereum ethereum, so our our ethos as the graph has always been decentralized, and you know, to enable the best security possible. You know, we really believe you can't have a DApp if it's

not decentralized, meaning all components are. And in our history of just assessing blockchains, and you know, having been around for a few years, um Ethereum was the one that stayed true to that mission. Um the strongest, you know, and we're even seeing that today in you know, what some people call Ethereum taking its time with a roadmap. Others could see as actually Ethereum being very thoughtful with

its roadmap to not do things too quickly UM. And you know, you see other problems on newer chains that you know Ethereum also experienced earlier on but Ethereum is just at a more mature state. And you know, our goal, although the graph network is built on Ethereum, our goal is actually to index all of the world's data, meaning

any blockchain. So our hosted service currently supports twenty seven chains, including many of the layer twos on the aream, and soon all those chains will also be supported on the network itself. And you mentioned that other Layer one other chains have had issues recording this January and the last few days. Salana one of the chains that we've talked about in the past that is arguably an Ethereum competitor has seen some pretty big delays and slow down, so

a lot of kinks still being worked out. You just raised at the graph fifty million dollars is led by Tiger Global. What is uh, what is the plan for this money and what do you need to build? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked. So. Over the last year, we've been pioneering this new strategy that we called decentralized m n A. So we realized really early on that the mission of the Graph was so ambitious, so vast, it couldn't be done by one team, and nor was

that the goal. UM. You know, part of decentralization is also decentralizing the contributors. So over the last year, we've had four new teams join us full time UM that specialized in anything from back end infrastructure to cryptography to UM graph q l A p i s and bring them into act basically as full time core developers on the protocol. So we aren't no longer you know, one team that you know initially launched the protocol. Where five and we raise this round basically to continue moving along

the strategy. UM. We have a goal of bringing on another three to five teams in the next two years UM, and that might be to help with the current roadmap elements such as, um, you know, improving the efficiency of the infrastructure. We also are you know, working and doubling down on cryptography to make sure that the data that is actually being you know, queried by apps is verifiable. So we've got quite a complex roadmap UM, and we're looking to use that fifty million dollars immunition UM to

basically continue building on our vision. So you've talked in the idea of like, oh, this is going to be the Google of blockchains and decentralized are making it easy for any DAP or applicating to centralized application to query

the chain. That sounds obviously very cool and theory. Can you give a little bit more, I guess some concrete examples of what kind of apps or what specifically would be involved in that, Like what are like I think this is where when people at least for me maybe I'm projecting, but at least for me, like I sort of get trading and how the automated market makers work. I sort of get like n f T s. But still when I think about, like, well, what is a

web three application? What is it true? Like blockchain application. Can you talk a little bit about specifically how applications are using your infrastructure. Yeah, So, in my opinion, a true DAP or true Web three app would be one that is open permission lists and decentralized, meaning that it would be very difficult or nearly impossible to take down. And users have the right to exit, meaning that the app or the platform itself isn't locking the user in.

But because everything is on a blockchain and other protocols, they can swap their data and assets between those um So you know, one really great example is e n S Ethereum Name Service. So this is you know, ethereum domains, and this means that any application could essentially query data about your Ethereum name Joe or Tracy and use that information on any website. So instead of using a Google Magic link like we use today, we could use Ethereum

name service. And that means that any application that wants to get data from your e n S names so maybe that's your wallet and your activity, they could query a subgraph, so that's an e n S a p I. So any information on you know that that's from the blockchain, whether it's trade volumes, or pricing or assets needs to be queried from a blockchain, and subgraphs make it much easier since developers don't need to rebuild their own ap I. So you know, anyone building on let's say the unit

swap protocol can just use the exact same unit swap API. Because it's open source, they can also fork it, rebuild it, maintain it if they want to. Um. You know, the end goal being that all these subgraphs are public goods and they're even maintained by the community or a doubt itself, and that really enables much more you know, innovation time, you know, maybe even cost savings for the team because they don't need to hire a full time engineer to

manage that database. UM and it really enables compose ability. So many teams can collaborate on either the same API or you know, the same protocol without having to do the same work again. So I really like that definition of right to exit because it jives really nicely with

the wallet idea. We're talking with Mike dem Ray about this about how um you know, if if you have a wallet, you know, say meta mask or something, it's easy to port that onto something like Rainbow and you're not dependent on the platform in order to access your information and your data and your assets. So that makes a lot of sense to me. But one thing I'm wondering is, you know, you've mentioned decentralization a number of times in this conversation, and you've even talked about a

decentralized way to invest in decentralization. Why is it so important beyond a better user experience? Because people talk about Web three point oh as almost creating at our world, right, it seems to have all these philosophical attachments and moral values attached to it. What is it about decentralization that makes it so important in your view and presumably so great. I think there's a few things that we're starting to

see even play out in crypto. So one is censorship, you know, the very common use case, and we're starting to even see folks that just recently entered the n f T space realized that, oh, you know, if the n f T DAP isn't fully decentralized, meaning the A P I, the server and where that n f T metadata is stored, then you know, is that n f T really real? Can I have the right to exit that platform? Um? So you know, that's one one use case. The second would be, you know, servers get taken down

all the time. Google goes down, Facebook goes down, and they've been around for decades, and when we think about scaling to a global network, you know, whether that's transactions or n f T s, you really want to make sure your app doesn't go down. So one really great

anecdote for us was Constitution down. So I'm not sure if you've heard of Constitution to um, you know, millions of dollars collected from the community to come bid for the Constitution and at its peak, uh, you know, of excitement, It's app went down because the API went down, and so they actually transitioned to using a subgraph that was on the decentralized network to make sure that they could

continue staying up during the auction. So that's a great example of we're already seeing that today that you know, things go down all the time. But furthermore, like why would you want adapt team to be the team also managing the node and doing all the complexities. So one thing the graph and other decentralized protocols allow for is unbundling of what we're otherwise centralized services. Or um tasks that were managed by the project team originally, but now

we can actually completely fragment that. So whereas a team might have been the one that deployed the smart contracts, they might not be the team managing the UI. They also might not be the team managing the a p I. And that's fine because at the end of the day, we're all building on top of each other's open source

tooling and protocols. So just on that note, I mean this is something that people who are iCal of the web three point oh idea will often go after this idea that you're just going to have people, you know, a community sort of maintaining these databases or being responsible

for individual components of something that all fits together. And maybe they argue that, well, they don't have an actual self interest in keeping these up to date in the same way that a company like a Google or a Facebook, even though you know, you might think it's evil, at least it has a reason to kind of keep things going. So the decentralized processes might not be as reliable as a more traditional or centralized process. I guess what's your

response to that sort of criticism. Yeah, I definitely hear that centralized coordination has its efficiency gains. But the benefit of blockchains and cryptocurrency is that we have this new incentive system. So whereas maybe Google had to be the one managing their servers because they owned all their equity and they also owned the rights to the server UM, we now have a world where anyone can buy a token at any time, a utility token. Anyone can use

that token in the network. So in the graphs case, that would be staking as an indexer or a delegator UM, and you can then earn rewards from you know, that network and the productivity and value that it creates for the world. So I actually think we're you know, solving some scalability issues where typically the only people that really care about the product are the people inside the company.

You know, often shareholders don't even care UM. But with tokens, you allow anyone to you know, contribute and take ownership in the graph or whatever protocol it might be. So we're seeing things like grantees come up with ideas of you know, tooling or protocol improvements just because they've now bought in and feel they are part of the community as well, even though maybe their full time job is you know, using their real name, and you know maybe in the Web two I wanna talk more about you know,

censorship and this and the dangers of centralization. And of course one of the most obvious cases is Twitter, and people find themselves their accounts are banned, uh suddenly, and there's sort of this impulse to like, you know, this is a word, like people love Twitter. You're on Twitter, the fellow egirls are on Twitter. But you know, one day Twitter could just take your account away. And it's sort of this poster child for the sort of like the double edged sort of Web two. Yes, there's all

these like cool platforms. We can share stuff, we can talk, but we really don't own own anything and we can be cut off. Do you first see Web three depths rebuilding that in a decentralized way, Like will there be a decentralized Twitter? Do you envision that, like at some point in the next five years, you won't have to use Twitter, you won't have to use Discord, or you won't have to use Telegram because there are new decentralized versions where you could share and communicate without the need

for a middleman company. I really do, and I think it's going to make building applications way more competitive because the switching costs are much ower. So you know, often the way banks and credit cards keep customers in is the switching costs or hig you can't reach the bank, whatever it might be. UM. Here it's as easy as just sending wallet, sending funds to another wallet, UM, or you know, switching UM your your name or your n f T s. You know, by just selling it in

the marketplace. UM. So it'll be a lot easier to build those apps. And we're already starting to see it with adapt called Orbits recently came out. I know adapt called Scent has been out for a while, UM, but we'll probably see more iteration. What I'm personally excited for is to see the coupling of the actual actions on chain with our social platforms. So you know, right now, most dows, they typically have a forum or some kind of social platform where they discussed the doubt proposals before

it's actually put to a vote. And why is it that the voting in the forum discussion is disconnected? Um? You know, one of the things I love about Bloomberg is that the reason you know it kind of kicked off was because the messenger or the chat became so useful for traders, um, to make settlements or OTC trades,

whatever it might have been. And so I think we're gonna see that same kind of thing happened where our social applications are gonna start coinciding with maybe actually transactions, you know, maybe um submitting trades, and you know, across the board, we could see even the way we behave with each other starting to change. You know, people already start to stock each other's e and s names to see what they're doing. Um, So what else could there be?

I'm going to ask another boomer feasibility question, I guess, but I mean a lot of the a lot of the services online that people use now, like Twitter or Facebook, they're free. And the way those companies make money, um, you know maybe with the exception of Twitter, but the way they're supposed to make money is through advertising and through gathering user data so that they can target these people with the most effective ads. And it's supposed to

be the data which is the valuable product here. You know, you've got something for free in exchange for providing these companies reams and reams of data. When you move to decentralized applications my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, But my understanding is a lot of that data is supposed to be more freely available, more open, more transparent, which I guess makes it maybe less valuable to a company trying to do something with it. It's no longer proprietary.

So I guess the question is, like, how does that wide that wide open data or you know, the way that decentralization will make data more accessible, more transparent, more widely available, how does that stack up with actually making money from decentralized services and transactions? Like how are profits

actually supposed to be created through this process? Yeah, that's a really good question, and to be honest, I don't have a clear answer because I would say a lot of the infrastructure to enable even the most simple like data analysis isn't quite there yet. You know, I can speak for the graph and our roadmap is still quite ambitious.

You know, we'd like to be able to better support analytics for that use case you're talking about, But I I foresee a lot of different kinds of monetization strategies, so kind of like I mentioned, people participating in protocols, you know, that's revenue, so you know, whether it's a fund or an individual UM staking uh, you know, tokens

and then providing services. And those services could be anything from you know, looking at images and curating which art is most interesting to actually running hardware or you know, maybe being a trader or a yield farmer UM, and that is a way to generate income UM. I think we'll also start to see a lot more innovation in

the micro payment level. So whereas right now we're you know, not very mature in how do we enable what we call meta transactions, so kind of transactions embedded in the background. But I think what we might see in the future with oracles UM, you know, which is retrieving off Chaine data UM and other tooling UM the ability to charge or or be charged for smaller interactions and that gets charged directly to a wallet, and your wallet being you know, something like your E and S name is now tied

to your identity. Instead of the ad companies paying uh, you know, Twitter, the ad companies could in theories start paying users and that could be micropayments or micro transactions that are sent directly to the user wallet. UM. Similarly, maybe instead of UM artists, you know, art being looked at and them never receiving any rewards. Maybe artists are earning to their wallets based on impressions or micro impressions

on Instagram. UM. So I think we're gonna start seeing different kinds of monetization patterns arrive as the tech also becomes more mature UM. And that includes layer two. It includes things like the graph Um storage. You know, things like are we've ipfs really seeing all those pieces come together to make that possible? So, you know, one of the reasons, you know, one that I'm excited about having this conversation is you're really on both sides of the market.

As part of the Girl collective, you're an investor in various Web three infrastructure, and the director at the graph you're building stuff and raising money. So I want to start like, Okay, obviously we've seen this pretty big volatility, and by volatility I mean selling Ethereum has basically been cut in half since the middle of November. A lot

of coins have done worse. So I want to just start with like a simple question, which is have you seen when you're going out to market as an investor looking to buy into projects, has the selling um had any effect on sort of like private market valuations or

deal pace or anything like that. I haven't seen it effected, and I would be surprised if it does, because the thesis with you know, the girl and others is much more long term um typically at least two years, often decades, and so we're really focused on what is the next thing we're building, and how do we invest in in

that team that's building it. I mean, when you see people talk about crypto winter on Twitter, and you know, there have been people who maybe panic isn't the right word, but certainly there's a sort of sense of unease amongst crypto investors at the moment. I think, does does it affect your investing behavior at all? Or does it affect the way you think about things? Does it lengthen the timeline to make things come together or be viable or affected in any way? Yeah, I'd say it probably affects

us in how we think about our community. So anyone who is around during the last bear market remembers how brutal it was. You know, there were a lot of really challenging experiences, whether it was layoffs or lack of capital um, and so that is The first thing I thought about was, you know, are we going to make it as a collective, you know, is everyone going to be okay? But the more controversial perspective I have is that,

you know, bear markets are great. You know, as a builder, you know, the graph was built in a bear market, and most of the best projects and infrastructure today, whether it's later two S or n f T s, arrived during the bear market, and it gives us time to actually make mistakes, iterate. And even as an investor, you know, you need that time for a project team to iterate

to actually come up with something innovative. So I'm also excited, you know, if that is what's what's happening, if we're having a little bit of a slowdown to have projects, you know, maybe take that time, reassess whatever the roadmap is and keep shipping. So the other part of this and this was, you know, this may be true now in January, maybe it's probably true in November because there's just an insane amount of like institutional money coming into

the space. And last week there was a report that in Teresent Horowitz, which raised has a huge crypto fund, has been into the space for a long time, there's a report that their rate looking to raise like another four and a half billion for another crypto fund. We'll see if that comes together. But is there really like I mean, I guess there's questions like is their capacity like right now can money that scale be put to use?

Is there enough need for that much capital? Or if you have a good project as a builder, like is it really like all the options are on your side, like what is the who has the power right now? And is there really is there really used for that much cash coming into the space. I would say there is. You know, there's a lot of projects that continue to raise, whether it's you know, their seed or precede because they're just starting to out, or you know, maybe a Series

B because we're a few years into their cycle. Um, you know, there's a lot of opportunity to get involved, depending on what the flavor is, you know. So, um, some institutionals are more interested in defy given it's more consistent with their you know, typical finance exposure, and some are more interested in protocols. And I would say protocols are probably where there's more opportunity because they take longer to build, and so when when an investor might be

thinking about, you know, the roadmap of that team. You know, Ethereum took what is it now, so about six years almost six years just to really ship East too, you know, and you know, maybe there were some inefficiencies, but really it's just hard problems. It's hard cryptographic problems that requires the coordination between many different teams, often global, and so I think that's the best place that we could see more investment, you know, given that the roadmap is likely

you know, the next decade. I have a really tough question and um you know, we talked about in the intro how there always seems to be a new use case for crypto h So, you know, we had method of payment and then we kind of moved into defy and then web three point Oh, what do you think is the next big crypto use case or or perhaps what do you think is an underappreciated use case at the moment that people are going to be talking more

about in the coming years. Yeah. I have two favorites here so E and S. Like I mentioned Ethereum name services UM as the universal log in I think has been untapped and you know, watching them grow over the past year, grow into a dow you know, is really allowing them to flourish and so sort of surpassed the Web three community. Everyone in Web three is known about

them um. But the goal is really that that could be the killer app that gets WEBB two people in, because a universal login is something we can all relate to. You know, we all log into many apps and we all forget our passwords. The second is this cross chain universe. So something we've seen at the graph is a lot more queries and usage of subgraphs that are more focused maybe on wrapped bitcoin, so you know, creating some kind of wrapped bitcoin or solution that enables access to bitcoin

on ethereum or other chains. And to me, that signifies a lot more interest from the bitcoin community to actually get involved and defined some of these new activities or markets. So whether that's investing in n f t s or maybe actually just doing some investing in utility tokens um. Seeing that growth in wrapped bitcoin and wrapped tokens um

signifies a much more mature smart contract ecosystem. UM, So folks not only interested in the typical Bitcoin use case of you know, hard money, but also seeing that there's a bigger world here and a lot more opportunity to get involved. Well, Eva, that was great. I've always wanted to learn more about the work that you do and can, but you gotta I gotta get back. I really miss like the morning saying GM in the e girl a discord, So I don't know what happened, but if it still exists,

I really want to come back yet. Okay, I will make sure you're invited back in, Tracy, do you also want to join? You know? I think, okay, I'll come in. But this is a lot of pressure because now I have to think what my avatar is and what my I'm going to join on the pseud anonymous basis as like yeah, yeah, I gotta go choose my ape. So it's a lot of pressure. Yeah, exactly, all right, Well, Eva Balan, thank you so much for coming out on odd Lots. Thank you so much for having me with

the pleasure. Thank you, Eva. That was great, Trazy, I thought that conversation was really fun. I really don't know how you could like look at like the website of Eager Capital and see this investment collective of like all these cartoon characters and part of their investments are like like on their like portfolio page or a bunch of n f T s, And even if you think the whole thing is kind of nuts, like it seems pretty

fun and cool. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't want to get too profound about it, but maybe it's a really nice like due diligence test where if you saw a bunch of cartoon characters saying that they were investing in all this random stuff, you would be like, well, I have no idea if they're serious or not, because you know, one is a frog and the other one

is nape and another's an anime character or whatever. But if you actually looked at what each of them is doing and saying and understood whether or not what they were saying was making sense, and whether or not they were making intelligent commentary on the space, I feel like that's actually probably a better method of due diligence than seeing like Mark Anderson is investing in whatever startup and so it must be really good, which seems to be

what a lot of people do nowadays. No, I totally agree, and it's exactly right. Like if you know, like I said in the beginning, a lot of the people over the last you know, We've been following this space for years, but a lot of the people who I've been following and really like must read their stuff, I have no

idea who they are. They're completely undocked, their pseudonymous, but like they've broken through, and in Crypto specifically, I would say, also, you know, I think what did what was the term that evil years, like anti suit or something like that, like we're suits, But they said, like a lot of the people who I think, like frankly speak the most nonsense and speaking total jargon, are exactly like suits and people who like it's like I don't trust you, And

so I do think, like Crypto, the whole world like short of flips on its head. Where where credibility comes from, where credibility has earned? Yeah, And actually, I mean this has been a challenge for us on all plots because there have been anonymous people that we want to get on the show, especially to talk around n f T s, and it's hard for us to get them on because you know, even if they don't want to docks themselves

on the show. Um, and it's a bit difficult for us to have totally anonymous people, but if they give us an audio recording, you know, unless we like try to disguise the voice. Um, there's still a concern that they might docks themselves. But UM, I don't know. Maybe if anyone has any good ideas for getting around that,

we would be all ears. The other thing I want to say is, you know, we're talking about the difference between people who just like sort of babble in technical jargon, um, try to sound like they're knowledgeable versus people who are actually able to explain this stuff in a clear way. And I thought Eva's definition of what you know Web three point oh is what true do Centralization is, as this right to exit is a really simple and intuitive

way of thinking about it. Yeah, the idea of like that you could like, okay, you have this data or you have to use at cliche term that's or some jarget that's coming back, like the so called social graph, and the idea that you could move it, and the idea that not one company could control it and could be somewhere else. It's very powerful. I still feel like, you know, it's like, look, we're all like tweeting, even tweeting. The other girls are tweeting their discords or sorry discord

and cetera. Like there's still an incredible reliance on we have two tools, and I don't know, like it's still really hard for me to like envision like what the decentralized version of all this is going to be. Like I get n f t s, I get like having a wallet with like showing your n f t s, But that's different than like updating something that would be equivalent to a tweet, or sending something a message that would be there would be the equivalent to an email.

So I still have some part of me that's like has a hard time wrapping around like what the decentralized Internet really looks like. But you know, I don't get most of this stuff anyway, so I wouldn't necessarily hold that against them. Well, to me, that the data is the is the important issue here and the thing that has the big question mark around it. Right, So if you have the right to exit, you have the right to take all this data with you. And historically Web

two point oh has been run on proprietary data. That's how people make money. My question is like how does that transform into companies that are actually making profits? And Okay, maybe you don't need everyone to be making a profit in the same way that Facebook and Google and whoever have traditionally been making profits. But it seems like you still have to have some sort of monetization in order to incentivize people to come in and build this stuff.

But I mean, on the other hand, it does seem like there are a lot of people who are interested in building it right now, and there's certainly a lot of money pouring into the space without that monetization question actually having been answered in detail, So maybe that's on its way. Who knows. And I certainly believe Eva what she says that even with the recent selling and so many coins basically being cut in half, that these sort of like impulse to build and invest is still going strong.

It feels like, I'm I don't think we're going to have like an actually like crypto winter or everyone sort of like forgets about cryptover three years the way we did starting. No, it does feel like there's so many people and so much money in the space and it's almost its own belief system at this point that it's really hard for it to go away totally. Great, All right, shall we leave it there, Let's see it there? Okay, this has been another episode of the all Thoughts podcast.

I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joey Isn't Thought. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart. Follow our guest Eva Bayalin she is at Eva Bayalin Fellow or producer Laura Carlson at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg had a podcast, Francisco Leavi at Francisco Today, and check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening.